Chronic Blog Stagnation

Chronic Blog Stagnation … such a demoralizing phenomenon.

For a writer, it’s shameful: Summoning up a few hundred words several times a week should be painless, uncomplicated … even, dare I say it, fun.

Yet here sits this moribund blog, untouched for well over a year, its promises unfulfilled, its followers forsaken.

Oddly enough, I think I was on to something interesting when last I posted a handful of entries. Excavating oddities and rarities from my overcrowded library to share with like-minded authors and artists seems a noble enough endeavor, does it not? I believe it is time to dig up more of those small press curiosities in my collection to reveal to the fervent masses. I will also disclose some of the works that influenced my own writing – pulp magazines plucked from obscurity at flea markets, classic paperback horror anthologies and, of course, comic books.

Comic books – that’s where I will begin. In order to draw attention to the current Indiegogo fundraising campaign supporting the forthcoming World War Cthulhu anthology, tomorrow I will kick off a marathon of blog entries devoted to Lovecraft in comic books.

In the meantime, why not go watch the new promo video for WorldWar Cthulhu trust me, if you like horror – and if you particularly enjoy Lovecraftian horror – you’ll want to learn more about this first-rate anthology edited by Brian M. Sammons and Glynn Owen Barrass, set to be published by Dark Regions Press.

Aberations
Issue 6
Published 1992
Editor-in-chief: Jon L. Herron

Features fiction by David R. Addleman, Stephen Gresham, Don Hornbostel, Gerald Daniel Houarner, K.A. Kern, Daniel K. Munson, Dan Persons, Thomas S. Roche, David Starkey and Carter Swart; and poetry by John Binns, Marthayn Pelegrimas, Robert Dyer, Kimberly Wade, William Robertson, Paul Weinman, Francis DiPietro and Marian Crane.

Favorite short story:  Thomas S. Roche’s “Alice” is easily the most haunting piece in this issue, but I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the dark humor of Don Hornbostel’s “The Fast Feast.”  Hornbostel nicely captures and encapsulates the grim absurdity of 1980s post apocalyptic wittiness.

Favorite poem:  Both of Kimberly Wade’s poems stood out, but of the two, “Acid Tears” really won me over with its melancholic language.

Aberations
Issue 1
Published 1991

Features fiction by: Jeff VanderMeer, Lori Ann White, Mark Rainey, David Addleman, Kiel Stuart, Nigel Sellars, Barry Harringon, Robert L. Fleck and W.C. Leadbeater; and poems by Jon L. Herron, Richard L. Levesque, K.L. Jones and Mark Fewell.

Favorite short story:  “The God of Byzantium,” by Mark Rainey.  Arcane gods, a thirst for revenge and a seedy adult bookstore make this graphic nightmare a memorable tale.  Rainey’s marvelously sleazy details left me wanting to cleanse my hands with antibacterial gel.

Favorite poem:  “Nekton Wish-Kisses by the Pale Moonlight,” by Richard L. Levesque.  A dark ode to serial killer Ed Gein, Levesque’s poem has some unconventional – but evocative – imagery.

The quality of the artwork is fair to fine.  One illustration that particularly caught my eye:  Artist Richard Dahlstrom’s on page 45 – very reminiscent of images routinely found in 1970s horror comic magazines like Eerie and Creepy.  The artist has a gallery and a website: www.dahlstromgalleries.com.

Hey: Long time, no blog post.

It has been about two years since new content appeared here at Muted Mutterings of a Mad Poet.  The thing is, over the last couple of years I’ve hardly had time to write anything – fiction, poetry or witty, informative blog entries.  Besides, Muted Mutterings had mainly degenerated into a self-promotion page … a place to share sales and recent publications. 

These days, I do all that plugging on Facebook.

So, recently, I started working on a website.  It’s moving along nicely, and should be up and running within the next month.  It will have its own blog, too, where I can share publishing news.

So, what to do with Muted Mutterings of a Mad Poet …

I’ve decided to use this space to post informal reviews:  I’ll be unearthing some gems from my personal collection and discussing them here – things like long-lost small press publications, old pulp magazines and some of the books, anthologies and comic books that influenced or inspired me along the way.

Sounds like a plan, doesn’t it? 

Stay tuned …

July 2010 Summary

Fiction
Completed stories: None
Submitted stories: 6
Accepted stories: 4

Poetry
Completed poems: 5
Submitted poems: 5
Accepted poems: 3

Nonfiction
Completed articles: 9

• How to cope with memory loss
• How to live a healthy lifestyle
• Ringo Starr brings show to REH
• Curtain Call: “Nunsense” scores big on fun and puns (theater review)
• Crowded House heading to REH
• Curtain Call: Comedy kicks off Early Bird’s season (theater review)
• Plant, Band of Joy plays REH
• Curtain Call: Olson directs clever ‘Seafarer’ (theater review)
• August concert lineup

Submitted articles: 9
Accepted/published articles: 10

Reprints
Submitted reprints: 13
Accepted reprints: 11

Totals
Number of words written this month: Approximately 6,000
Number of submissions pending response: 80

Comments:
Not bad as far as submissions and acceptances go, but next month I plan on boosting my output dramatically. I have a number of stories I’ve left in limbo far too long … and I intend to get through all of them in the next few weeks!

Space Horrors

According to editor David Lee Summers, Space Horrors – the fourth installment of the Flying Pen Press series Full-Throttle Space Tales – is due out Oct. 1, 2010. The finalized version of the cover is shown here, and following is the description of the book which will appear on the back cover:

What horrors lurk among the stars?

If you dare venture into space, you will find planets where the rain will dissolve the flesh from your skeleton in a matter of minutes. There are undead stellar corpses that warp the very fabric of reality. There are bursts of radiation that will cook you alive within the walls of your spaceship.

And those are just the terrors we expect to face when we leave Earth.

In this volume you’ll find seventeen tales guaranteed to send a shiver down your spine. You’ll meet cold and dispassionate aliens—some so large they’ll swallow your starship whole, others so small they’ll turn your blood to dust. The prospect of encountering undead creatures such as vampires and zombies on Earth is frightening enough. Imagine meeting them while trapped during an interstellar flight. You’ll join men and women as they dare to explore haunted spaceships. In the end, you may discover that the most frightening creatures we’ll encounter among the stars are humans themselves.

We invite you to peer into the darkest reaches of space with Ernest and Emily Hogan, Sarah A. Hoyt, Dayton Ward, Danielle Ackley-McPhail and a dozen more new and veteran writers.

Here is the book's table of contents:

Introduction — David Lee Summers

Part I: Man’s Own Inhumanity

Poetic Justice — Alastair Mayer

Listening — Anna Paradox

The Walking Man — Glynn Barrass

Part II: Alien Menaces

Natural Selection — Simon Bleaken

Oh Why Can’t I? — CJ Henderson

Last Man Standing — Danielle Ackley-McPhail

Part III: Seductive Vampires

Anemia — David Lee Summers

Chosen One — Dana Bell

Sleepers — Selina Rosen

Divining Everest — Patrick Thomas

Part IV: The Spirit Realm

Into the Abyss — Dayton Ward

Salvage — David B. Riley

The Golem — Judith Herman

Part V: Shambling Zombies

In the Absence of Light — Sarah A. Hoyt

A Touch of Frost — Gene Mederos

Wake of the White Death — Lee Clark Zumpe

Plan 9 in Outer Space — Ernest and Emily Hogan

"They like me ... "

I was happily surprised recently to find a complimentary PDF copy of the July 2010 issue of Golden Visions Magazine, edited by Christine Lajoie Golden – particularly since I didn’t have any fiction appearing in the issue.

As it turns out, I received the copy because I was chosen by readers of the magazine as one of the top five favorite writers for 2009. Readers were asked to vote for their favorite authors whose work appeared in either the print or online version of Golden Visions Magazine in 2009. Following is a list of the top five authors, as printed in the magazine:

TM Hunter
Guy Belleranti
Fran Jacobs
Lee Clark Zumpe
Gustavo Bondoni

My short story “The Blacktide” appeared in Golden Visions Magazine, Issue 8, Oct.-Dec. 2009. It was my second appearance in GVM, preceded by the story “From Dark Shores,” Issue 2, 2008.

Authors don’t often get to hear applause. For me, satisfaction comes from completing a story, having a story accepted for publication, seeing a story in print and receiving payment for a story. Knowing that a number of readers, having read my work, took the time to show their approval by voting for it is infinitely more fulfilling.

I am grateful to those who participated in the voting and I am delighted my work was so well received by readers of Golden Visions Magazine.